


Inferno

by Antonio_Calavera



Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-12
Updated: 2016-03-12
Packaged: 2018-05-26 06:46:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6228061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Antonio_Calavera/pseuds/Antonio_Calavera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>To unite the kingdoms of Thedas against the Blight, the Warden must be a paragon of patience and tact, particularly when dealing with the stiff necks of the dwarves.</p>
<p>But even the most patient of men has his breaking point.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Inferno

The Paragon-forged crown gleamed on the head of Lord Harrowmont, now King Harrowmont as he rose and turned to address the Assembly. He opened his mouth to speak-

“I will not abide by this!” Prince Bhelen strode forward, nose in the air.

The Warden rolled his eyes. This was expected.

“The ancestors have spoken,” cried an outraged deshyr.

The Warden fixed the Prince with a warning glare. “Stand down, Bhelen. You've lost.”

Bhelen was shouting. “Would you let a surfacer decide the fate of the dwarves?!”

“Watch out, they brought weapons!”

“Guards!”

Bhelen's mace swung in a perfect arc at the newly elected king's back. This too was expected. The Warden's healing spell struck the king only a moment after the mace did.

The royal guards barreled into the fray, and the Warden adjusted his aim, preparing a swift, precise arcane bolt.

And then one of the guards struck a deshyr. She fell bleeding to the stone as several of the deshyrs turned their staves on Harrowmont's supporters. Guard battled guard as blow after blow rained on the rightful king.

And it was then that the Warden's patience for the dwarves finally, finally ran out.

In his mind, he saw the proud gladiators of the Proving intimidated into abandoning their lord. Carta thugs running wild in the commons and the diamond district. He thought of the forged documents, the blackmail, the Bhelen fanatics spewing hate even as he, an outsider, cut them down in the streets of their home. He thought of going to the Deep Roads ready to face darkspawn, and instead being beset by dwarves. Branka driven mad by ambition, Laryn betrayed and turned into a monster. He thought of Hespith throwing herself off a cliff in shame, of Oghren abandoned and left to rot in a tavern. He thought of Kardol and the Legion, ready to give all to save the world, and held back by the selfishness of rich and petty nobles. He thought of the darkspawn, ignored, who were coming for them all. He thought of the two Paragons he had met that day, more than any dwarf had seen in generations, and how the only thing they had in common was that they had abandoned and inflicted atrocities on their people.

And then fought each other, as the Assembly was doing now. Deshyr against deshyr, royal guard against king, the prince in the midst of it all.

The arcane spark fizzled out, and as his hands erupted in magical flame, the Warden found a moment of clarity and conscience, in which he questioned his own rage. He had fought and killed worse, surely.

His lip curled. Uldred had been possessed. Jowan, merely homicidally stupid. Zathrias had repented at the end.

But these deshyrs were the trusted and sworn representatives of the dwarven people. They had chosen this. They were doing it with their eyes open. And in that moment, the Warden made a choice of his own, one that the dwarves would carve into stone for centuries to come. The arcane bolt was a memory now, as he called to mind a spell that, in more innocent times, he would never, ever have considered casting in an enclosed space with allies in the room. The coup would end with this spell, a spell that would punish everyone who did it, everyone who planned it, everyone who benefited, and everyone who had stood by and let it happen.

His roar momentarily brought the entire battle to a standstill and echoed across the Diamond District, a scream of hatred too monstrous to have come from an elven throat.

In latter days, Alistair of the Grey Wardens would note with worry that it sounded exactly like the cry of a Darkspawn Shriek. But Alistair was a man of action, not musing, and so his immediate and correct response was to barrel toward Wynne and tuck the aged healer behind the protection of his fireproof shield.

And at the feet of the traitor prince, at the feet of the rightful king, an Inferno of swirling flame erupted in the Hall of the Dwarven Assembly. Deshyrs, loyalist and traitor, screamed as their eyeballs erupted into blossoms of pink gore. Royal guards fell to their knees with molten fat bubbling through the gaps in their armor. Sheets of blackened flesh peeled away from their owners and flew in perfect circles around the room before exploding like firecrackers. Oghren's hip flask detonated, spraying armor shards, a kidney, and two meters of intestine across the hall, and it was only Wynne's perfectly formed healing spell, cast with eyes closed and breath held, that saved him.

Those who did not hold their breath were not so lucky, as the oxygen-hungry flame tore the air from their chests with such force that their lungs were pulled inside out and hung like deflated, bleeding balloons from mouths too damaged to scream.

The Warden however continued to scream.

Harrowmont's crown glowed with a radiance that blinded Bhelen. The younger dwarf staggered back naked as his armor ran in molten streams down his body. Harrowmont, beard aflame, tore off the white-hot crown and tossed it aside before it could melt its way through his skull and destroy his brain. Bhelen, drawing to himself the strength of the Aeducan line, limped agonizingly forward and aimed one last blow at the stricken king.

But his mace drooped like a flaccid penis before erupting into vapor, leaving him with a short, impotent stump.

Outside the Assembly hall, dwarven citizens trampled children in their panic as jets of flame beamed out the windows and carved window-shaped fissures into the living rock at the other end of the cavern. Dagna gazed slack-jawed at the strange geometric patterns in the flame, and in later years, as the Circle's first dwarven scholar of magical theory, would write a well-received treatise on the formation of shock diamonds in pressurized streams of fire. In the newly formed chantry, Brother Burkel and his small band of worshippers huddled and prayed for mercy to the Maker as the fire created its own wind system and sent the holy books flying. The homily he would proclaim at funeral after funeral over the next week, of how even the innocent Andraste did not escape the pyre, would later be credited with a wave of dwarven conversion to the beliefs of the Andrastian Chantry.

In the market, Dogmeat howled before diving for cover with the rest of the Grey Warden's party, except for Leliana, who sprinted for the Diamond District the instant she heard the scream, the only person, dwarven or otherwise, to run toward the Assembly that day.

Harrowmont fell and did not get up. This saved him, because the Warden's rage was not yet exhausted. A fireball thundered across the room too fast to see and exploded against the back of Bhelen's helm. The last of the royal guard fell with the skeletonized hands of a deshyr around his throat. Bhelen screamed and screamed and screamed.

The flames subsided. Alistair dug into his pack, found the one enormous health poultice he had been saving for the final battle against the archdemon, and emptied it into his and Wynne's throats. The Warden, eyes ablaze, was charging across the room, scooping up the crown in hands that were still wreathed in flame.

“You want the crown so badly? Here! Try it on!” And he smashed the crown, weighty, unblackened, unmelted, glowing with unearthly heat, into Bhelen's face. Bhelen's nose caved in at the first blow. He choked and spit out blood and broken teeth. The Warden swung the superheated crown of the dwarven king into his foe's countenance one, two, three times, and then, howling, shoved it onto Bhelen's head.

Bhelen was beyond screaming. Almost he was beyond pain.

The Warden's conscience finally found its voice as Bhelen writhed and screamed soundlessly as he sank slowly into a floor bubbling and molten from heat. Unbidden, a healing spell found its way into his hands and knit together blackened flesh and nerves numbed by pain . And from the other hand, also unbidden, came a blast of searing flame. And then another healing spell, and then more flame. The Warden's lyrium potion erupted into steam when he opened the flask, but the vapor gave him enough for one more healing spell. He used it on Harrowmont, and that was as far as conscience came that day.

Bhelen's last conscious act was to throw off the crown. The Warden pressed blazing hands into the prince's chest, melted his way through his rib cage, and clawed his fingers around the madly thudding heart.

And then there was more fire.

It poured out of Bhelen's throat. It came out his eyes. A jet of it fired out of his anus. And the last son of King Endrin Aeducan came to an end bereft of life and dignity on the scorched and melted stone.

His blackened bones would remain there, irretrievably fused with the rock, forever. The dwarves could, in theory, have scooped out and replaced that section of their defaced floor, but it is perhaps hopeful that Bhelen's silhouette was allowed to remain there in full view of all future assemblies as a reminder of the fate of those who forget honor and duty.

No further words were exchanged between the Warden and the king. The Warden produced the ancient Grey Warden treaties, and the king, beardless and sad, nodded silently. He then handed the Warden the staff he had carried as King Endrin's second. It was blackened and half-melted, and the Warden accepted both the silent gratitude and the silent rebuke. He then turned, shook the ashes from his boots, and till the day of his death came never again to Orzammar.

That column of flame would be seen many times erupting amid the darkspawn during the final battle. And alone among all the gathered armies of Ferelden, the dwarves when they saw it did not cheer.


End file.
